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A replica of the box Reg spent three days in (Picture: Marcus McSorley)

Yeah, it’s a box, so what?

But this box, my friends, holds an extraordinary story. Gather round, and hear the tale of how a man posted himself from London to Australia.

Reg Spiers spent three days inside this wooden box to get home to Perth after he found himself stranded in the UK.

He’d come over in the 1960s to recover from an injury and take a break from his athletics career.

The promising javelin thrower had aspirations of competing in the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

But when that proved unachievable, he took a job at an airport to earn money and fly home.

However, when Reg’s wallet was stolen he was forced to change his game plan – or never get home in time for his daughter’s birthday.

Reg Spiers back in his day (Picture: Marcus McSorley)

So, he had a friend build a box he could live in after it was loaded on to a plane (of course).

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He said in an interview with the BBC: ‘I just got in the thing and went. What was there to be frightened of? I’m not frightened of the dark so I just sat there.

‘It’s like when I travel now if I go overseas. There’s the seat. Sit in it, and go.’

But the reality of travelling 13,000 miles across three continents as a stowaway inside a box was far more complicated.

Reg had left both ends of the crate open so he could leave the box once in the hold.

But he there was no way he could have prepared for the long delays he encountered.

His journey started at Heathrow where he was immediately forced to endure a 28-hour delay before boarding the plane, crammed in the 5ft x 3ft x 2.5ft box, after fog caused delays.

A recreation of what the box would have looked like (Picture: Marcus McSorley)

Let’s not forget that Reg was over 6ft 5in tall – so this box, which was the largest permitted by the airlines, was not exactly roomy.

He could not lie down without bending his legs, and he could only stretch out if he sat up – and people today complain about leg room.

Once in the air, Reg crept out to urinate into one of the used spaghetti cans, leaving the full vessel on top of the crate to be discovered by irate French baggage handlers as the plane descended into Paris on its first stop.

It could have been a risky move, but fortunately the baggage handlers blamed their British peers for the little gift.

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‘They were saying some terrible things about the English,’ he said of the French handlers. ‘But they didn’t even think of the box. So I kept on going.’

The next spanner in the works almost put an end to Reg’s adventure.

His box was left in the burning sun upside-down for four hours, and dehydration was beginning to kick in.

So Reg did what any self-respecting 6ft 5in Aussie-in-a-box would do in the circumstances: he got naked.

Reg's box supplies

Two tins of spaghetti

Bottle of fruit juice

Bar of chocolate

Fruit gums

Torch

Blanket

Pillow

Two plastic bottles – one for water, one for urine

A suit

The actual box (Picture: Marcus McSorley)

More hours past until, finally, he arrived home to the sweet sound of Australian baggage handlers cursing as they tried to pick up his massive crate.

He said: ‘The accents – how could you miss? I’m on the soil. Amazing. Wonderful. I made it.

‘I was grinning from ear to ear, but I wasn’t going to let them know I’m there now – I’ve almost pulled the whole thing off.

‘I knew they would take the box to a bond shed. When they put me in the shed I got out straight away. There were cartons of beer in there. I don’t drink but I whipped a beer out and had a drink of that.’

Reg Spires was a promising athlete (Picture: Marcus McSorley)

Once on the inside, he found tools and cut his way out of the room. Reg slid into a suit, jumped a fence and hailed a cab home. Simple as that.

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The idea worked – even if his wife didn’t believe him when he told her how he’d got home – but it would seem crazy today.

The cost of shipping the box would have actually been more expensive than a plane ticket. But Reg got around it by signing to pay upon delivery (of course, the crafty guy had escaped by that point so he never had to cough up).

There a slim chance that something like this would ever happen these days. If someone did attempt it, the chances of making it to the final destination are much slimmer.

Freezing to death isn’t the prime concern – plane holds are usually pressurised and above 0c – but screening is now so advanced that a stowaway in a box would very likely be found at the first inspection.

While Reg’s box adventure ended there, the rest of his life was just as eventful. He went on to smuggle both heroin and cannabis, received a death sentence in Sri Lanka, adopted three different identities and eventually spent five years in an Australian jail.

Reg, now 73, separated from his first wife and now lives in Adelaide with his new partner.